DEVELOPMENT

 Presented by…………….

JAWAD BASHIR(THUNDER)
 Introduction
An Overview of the Main Issues:
 What is ‘development’?
 How have ways of ‘seeing’ ‘development’ tended to
shape ‘development theory and policy’?
 What are the contemporary dilemmas of development
studies/discourse?
 What are the contemporary objectives of
‘development’?
 What is the state of ‘development’ in the world and the
region?
 Looking back- Looking ahead: Whither the ‘development
project’?
WHAT DEVELOPMENT IS
 What is development?
 What characteristics do you associate with ‘developed’
and ‘less developed’ countries?

 Are countries really classifiable?

 What develops?

 Whose development is it? Who and what have defined

it? Consider here alternative forms of social life and their
viewpoints

 For what end is development? Is there an end to it? How

are these chosen or determined?
 What is development?
 Are small countries supposed to have the same
features as large countries when it comes to
mapping their state of ‘development’?
 Can rich countries lack ‘development’?

 Is ‘development’ the negation of ‘poverty’? Or is

it, its Father? sibling? No real relation?

 But then, what is poverty? Who are the ‘poor’?

CHALLENGE OF
DEVELOPMENT
 The challenge of ‘development’
 When we speak of the ‘challenge of development’ what has
been meant by that?

 Post war US perspective provided by Harry Truman in his

inaugural presidential address:

 “We must embark on a bold new program for making the

benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress
available for the improvement and growth of the
underdeveloped areas.” quoted in Gilbert Rist, The History of
Development, (1997:41)

 Should one take the US model of ‘development’ or ‘progress’

as the defining template for what attaining a ‘ state of
development’ should look like?
IDEA OF DEVELOPMENT
 The Idea of ‘Development’
 Is the Western discourse on development
neutral?

“ … [it] inevitably contained a geopolitical

imagination that has shaped the meaning of
development for more than four decades. …It
is implicit in expressions such as First and
Third World, North and South, center and
periphery. The social production of space
implicit in these terms is bound with the
production of difference, subjectivities and
social orders.” Escobar, Encountering
Development, (1995:9)
 State lead Growth?
 The paradigm of development that dominated
after the Second World War emphasized state
directed, inward-orientated, import-substitution
industrialization.
 Improving the living conditions of the masses

was to be achieved through nation wide

development plans emphasizing self sufficiency.
 The analythical framework for deriving

investment was the Harrod-Domar model and a

simple Keynesian aggregate savings function.
 Theories of Modernization
 Modernization is the total transformation of a
traditional or pre-modern society into the type of
technology and associated social and political
organization that characterizes the Western
world.

 Countries develop out of a functionalist,

evolutionary, system theory of social development
that is linear.
 Theories of Modernization
 Development as modernization leading to
modern growth, thus involves the modernization
of social relationships and institutions, political
relationships and institutions and economic
relationships and institutions, or the shift from
traditional to modern society.
 The locus of change is the modern sector,
centered on the rationalist values of the
enlightenment era and the cultural rise of the
modern nation state.
 Features of economic
modernization
 Influenced by keynesian ideas and the Marshall
plan.
 Distinction made between backward or
traditional countries and advanced or modern
capitalist countries. The goal is to show how
countries make the transition to a modern
industrial country.
 The transition to modernization is marked by
sustained and higher rates of growth caused by
rising levels/rates of savings/investment
 Features of economic
modernization
 The engine of growth is the capitalist class in the
modern sector, given their profit maximizing,
individually rational, modern values and
behaviour.
 Under conditions of international trade, there
tends to be a presumption that such
international economic interactions will have a
favourable net impact, with the expectation of
global economic convergence i.e. the poor
catching up with the rich.
 The History of ‘Development’
 The origin of the idea of development is founded in the rationalism and
humanism of the 17th to 19th century, as Potter et al note in
Geographies of Development ( 1999:4):

“ During the Enlightenment period it was believed that by applying

rational and scientific thought to the world, change could become
more ordered, predictable and valuable. Those who could not adopt to
such views became thought of as ‘traditional’ and ‘backward.’”

 The work and writing of Sir William Petty (late 17th century) on taxes
and national accounting, Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, 1775), David
Ricardo, ( theories of distribution and international trade), Karl Marx,
( theory of capitalist accumulation, contradiction and crises), and Émile
Durkheim’s, Max Weber’s and Talcott Parsons’ social theories of
modern society, provided the conceptual grid for much of later
approaches and perspectives on the nature of modern development.
 The History of ‘Development’
The contemporary (post-war) view of ‘development’ emerged with

1. The post-war rise of the Keynesian inspired development planning

for both colonial and post-colonial growth, given the success of the
European Marshall plan. (Note: Countries often worked with a
simplified view of Harrod and Domar’s dynamic growth equations,
where growth is a function of the level of investment/savings and
justified their state interventions by noting the problems of market
failure and imperfect equilibriums, e.g. Poverty traps);

2. the US post war foreign policy agenda. Both of which prompted the
emergence of the

3. Dual economy, structuralist and modernization frameworks for

discussing the success and failures of “Third World” development.
 The Quest for ‘Development’
 The ideas for “catching up” to the West which
underpinned these early approaches were a powerful
stimulus for newly independent states to seek to exceed
their negative endowments from a colonial past.

 The First wave development strategies of the post-

colonies was led by the “ developmental state” whose
object was to break out of the conditions of
‘backwardness’ or ‘underdevelopment.’

 The pivotal emphasis was on realizing growth as the

evidence of the emergence of a modern economy,
identified by the rise of an urban capitalist industrial
sector ( as distinct from an agricultural/rural economy).
 Questioning ‘Development’?
 The growth of inequities and poverty or the
failure to take of into “ self sustained growth” in
these newly independent states provoked grass-
roots and intellectual critiques of the
development paradigm and the state’s
development policies for “catching up.”

 A Sharp distinction is drawn between growth

and development, in the debate over how to
measure the well being of the inhabitants of a
country, or their experiences of “progress.”
 What should development
mean?
 The measure of growth as proxy for social and economic
welfare/ progress criticized on grounds that aggregate
income measures such as Gross domestic product ( GDP)
per capita ( income per head) suppresses ( inter alia) :
1. Distributional inequities
2. Non-market transactions ( eg in the informal economy)
3. Quality of life experiences, e.g. in terms of health
education, life expectancy, infant mortality
4. Environmental quality and sustainability.

Major consensus is shaped around the need to move to

define development beyond growth.
 Rethinking ‘development’- key
shifts
 Central shift in defining development from outcome to
process variables. Moving away from utilities, based on
income and consumption, to a focus on what individuals
are able to do and be, as later to be measured or
evaluated by Sen’s freedoms and capabilities approach
to development. Sen’s work underpins the rise the
UNDP’s human development approach and its many
human development indices.

 Associated with this shift are the critiques from Marxist,

Plantation and dependency schools, feminist, grass-root
‘alternative development’ or ‘anti-development’ social
movements as well as post- structuralist critiques of the
certainties of modern society and modern development.
 Re-defining the problem of
‘Development’
 James Lamb ( 1973)

If there is to be a possibility of choosing a human

path so that all human beings may become the
active subjects of their own history, it must begin
at the level of new analysis. Development should
be a struggle to create criteria, goals and means
for self-liberation from misery, inequity and
dependency in all forms. Crucially, it should be
the process a people choose which heals them
from historical trauma, and enables them to
achieve a newness on their own terms”
 Re-defining the problem of
‘Development’
 Dudley Seers: The questions to ask
about a country’s development are
therefore: What has been happening to
poverty? What has been happening to
unemployment? What has been happening
to inequality? If all these have become
less severe than beyond any doubt there
has been a period of development for the
country concerned. (Dudley Seers, 1972)
 Re-defining the problem of
development
 Amartya Sen (1998)

 “It is not hard to see why the concept of development is so

essential in general. Economic problems, do, of course, involve
logistical issues, and a lot of this is undoubtedly engineering of
one kind or another. On the other hand, the succes of all this
has to be judged ultimately in terms of what it does to the lives
of human beings.”

 Joseph Stiglitz (1998)

“It used to be that development was seen as simply increasing

GDP. Today, we have a broader set of objectives, including
democratic development, egalitarian development, sustainable
development, and higher living standards.”
ANY QUESTIONS